Sunday, October 24, 2010

A few years ago, one of the most popular movies was Robert Redford's The Horse Whisperer. Based on Nicholas Evans' wildly popular, but critically panned novel by the same name, the movie is a blueprint for healing. The patients in this case are Annie, an editor of a fashion magazine and the mother of an early-adolescent girl, Grace, who lost her leg in a horrific horse accident. The horse involved in the accident, Pilgrim, provides the overarching metaphor for the movie as the patient on whom the "horse whisperer" works his skill.

Pilgrim, so seriously injured in the accident that his trainer and other family members counseled "putting him down," is driven from New York City to Montana horse country for a consultation with the horse whisperer. Pilgrim's retraining must begin from square one. Rather than break the horse in a traditional sense, the horse whisperer is willing to let a horse be a horse. When Annie calls Tom Booker and identifies herself as a "person with horse problems," Booker says that he usually works with "horses who have people problems." The key is patience and an ability to get inside the horse's head. Healing takes time.

The horse whisperer is not only a channel of healing for Pilgrim, but spurs Annie to re-evaluate her own loss of soul. And Grace, too, is nurtured back to a place of healthy self-esteem and, even without the use of a leg, is able to again ride her beloved horse, Pilgrim.

In our text for today, we encounter a sage old horse whisperer near the end of his life. The apostle Paul has endured all manner of challenges and crises in his life, both external and internal. He worked with all sorts of people with varying levels of commitment and character. Some rewarded his patience, others sadly disappointed him: "Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me," he writes. Alexander the coppersmith "did me great harm", and, at first defense, he notes, "all deserted me".

But Paul didn't work with horses, bringing healing and training, but he did work with habits. Without a doubt, Paul was one of the most dynamic, successful "habit whisperers" this world has ever known. Through the power of his faith and the forcefulness of his personality, this apostle brought the gospel to the Gentiles and established the new face of the first-century church. But throughout Paul's ministry he constantly faced the challenge of keeping in touch with the ever more widely scattered new churches and keeping in line the diverse and sometimes downright ornery congregations that were now a part of Christ's body.

Part of Paul's problem was that he kept ending up in prison, cut off from both his coworkers and his enemies. Dealing with these difficulties forced Paul to develop some very good habits, behaviors and attitudes that enabled him to lead the church and guide its development no matter where he was or in what circumstances he found himself.

Unfortunately, bad habits are big business. Every day the makers of diet pills and nicotine patches, those who run state-of-the-art detox centers and rehab programs, divorce lawyers and plastic surgeons make a tidy profit out of bad habits. Because of the perversity of human nature, bad habits are easy to cultivate and good habits are hard to establish.

--Why is it that habitually not flossing your teeth is so much easier than habitually flossing them?

--Why is it that habitually staying up too late is so much easier than habitually rising with the sun?

--Why is it that habitually clicking on the TV is so much easier than reading a book?

--And why is it that habitually reaching for the ice cream in the freezer is so much easier than habitually reaching for an apple in the fruit bowl?

When you were a kid, did you ever notice how it's much easier to remember what your mom told you NOT to do than what it was she told you she wanted you to do? It seems we just naturally gravitate toward the negative.

Still need convincing? Try this: Think of the Ten Commandments, God's great list of "good habits." Now which commandments come first to mind? Is it those that begin with "Thou shalt" or those that sternly warn "Thou shalt NOT!" Isn't it much easier to recall the negative warnings, the bad habits God declares off-limits, than it is to remember those things God specifically wants us to do?

Intending to do something about all our bad habits "some day" is one of the commonest bad habits of all. And not only that, but over time, our moral hearing ability sometimes falls victim to petrifaction; our capacity to hear the normal voice of virtue diminishes. In such circumstances, it often takes a change of volume -- as from a shout to a whisper -- for us to really hear.

So today let's look at a list of bad habits that Paul, the "habit whisperer," would like to break us of.

1. CowardiceWhen the going gets tough, get going. Get out of there. Obviously, Paul never picked up this habit, for he is writing from prison. His catalog of catastrophes included "afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonment's, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger" and much more. But Demas was apparently afflicted with this habit. Faced with the choice between the hard road of the gospel and the easy enticements of this "present world," when Demas got bugged, he bugged out, bailed out, wimped out and copped out. He was "out of it."

2. IndependenceToday's epistle reading reveals poignantly how Paul always worked as part of a team. He didn't always try to do everything himself. He listened to others. As he sits in his prison cell, growing ever more convinced that this incarceration will end only with his death, Paul's greatest sadness is that all his co-workers and companions except for Luke have left. Paul's ministry is one of the greatest models of team leadership we have apart from Jesus and the disciples.

3. SelfishnessNot Paul. Rather than reserve his energies and protect his resources, he was willing for his life to be "poured out as a libation." He was willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of his mission. He puts himself on the line -- all the time.

4. ArroganceThe gospel text for today gives a great example of alienating arrogance. The proud and preening Pharisee boasts of his obedience and righteousness even in his prayers. Paul, though often bold and boastful about what God could do, was not boastful of his own abilities. He is able to say he fought, finished and kept the faith, but it was "the Lord [who] stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed".

Although he might have been tempted to be a "know-it-all" -- for, more than any person of his age, this profoundly brilliant intellect no doubt did, in fact, know it all -- Paul's experience of God was of a God that does not fit into our two-pound box of brains. In fact, Luther's concept of the "hiddenness of God" was lifted right out of Pauline theology. God always confounds our categories. A God who is understandable and predictable is a God of our own creation. There is a valued saying in the Talmud that suggests: "Teach thy tongue to say, 'I don't know.'"

Paul admitted his mistakes. He took to heart Jesus' "sacrament of failure" -- if someone refuses to receive you, or shuts the door in your face, shake the dust off your feet and move on.

Meet another "habit whisperer." This elderly woman of faith lives alone and is blind. She lost her husband early in their marriage, went to work, raised two daughters, and maintained her home. John Buchanan fills in the details: "Over the years, she supplemented her income by baking wonderful, melt-in-your-mouth sourdough bread. When her daughters left home, she kept baking bread but now gives it away to her friends.

"And then she began to lose her sight. Macular degeneration was the diagnosis, a particularly severe case that progressed from partial sight to almost total blindness quickly. How to live? How to carry on? How to bake bread? Who would blame her if she at least stopped baking her bread?

"But instead of submitting to the darkness, she made an important decision. Baking bread enabled her to express her love, express the best of who she was, and she wasn't going to stop doing that even if she couldn't see. So she mixes from memory. And she finds the dials on her stove and bakes in the dark.

"It's risky. She's never quite sure of herself ... but she has decided to bake in the dark, to be without sight, to see without sight" (see John M. Buchanan, "Seeing Without Sight,").

Here was a woman who modeled the opposite of these defective habits. Here was a woman who, when the going got tough, and the heat got turned on, stayed in the kitchen.

She replaced cowardice with courage.

She rejected independence in favor of ministry to others.

She refused to be selfish by baking only for herself, and instead continued to give.

She renounced arrogance in favor of being faithful to her small gift -- baking bread, which, in God's hands, became a large blessing.

If we listen carefully, we can hear the voice of not only the sage "habit whisperer" of our text, but the Wise Whisperer who knows us better than we know ourselves, and who calls on us to transcend the defective habits that render us ineffective and be more like the woman baking in the dark: filled with courage, ministry, giving and faithfulness.

Such are the habits that will enable us, like Paul, to fight the good fight, finish the race and keep the faith!

The Twentieth Sunday after TrinityFruit flies and sea slugs. There’s a chance these creatures may improve your own cerebral output. Research on these organisms promises to provide us with a number of innovative medicines to enhance the memory, including what some are calling “Viagra for the brain.” Although, not a very church polite term it would seem.

Two renowned scientists, and the biotech companies they founded, are planning on it. Dr. Eric Kandal, Professor of Columbia University and the 2000 Nobel Prize winner for his study of cellular mechanisms of learning and memory, first started his research on sea slugs in the 1950s, when many people discounted any practical results. The founder of Memory Pharmaceuticals, Kandal firmly believes that within a few years there will be a pill that will dramatically improve one’s memory and lead to other medications that significantly alter the brain chemistry.

Tim Tully and Jerry Yin in Cold Springs Harbor laboratory in New York have demonstrated that fruit flies injected with a protein called CREB (c-AMP Response Element Binding protein) have shown a remarkable ability to retain memory. In the early 90’s Tully, who is a genetic scientist and the founder of Helicon Therapeutics, teamed up with his colleague Yin, to produce fruit flies with photographic memories. Since that time they have produced similar results in mice. Tully’s Helicon and Kandal’s Memory Pharmaceuticals are engaging in scientific competition to discover those genetic breakthroughs that will lead to improvements far beyond memory.

This is the advent of what others have called smart pills, or brain boosters. Biotech firms are racing to have smart pills on the market, and not only for persons suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. The real target is middle-aged folks, the boomers who are always looking for an edge to keep the process of aging at arm’s length, particularly the normal forgetfulness that comes as one gets older.

Some are skeptical. Writing in Forbes, Robert Langreth cautions, “But a pill popped by millions of healthy people looking for a mental edge could pose serious risks. Forgetfulness is an important part of proper mental function.” It’s like, what is life without the ritual of hunting for lost car keys? Or, as in my case, walking from one room to the other and forgetting what you were to walking to the room for in the first place.

Notice the nomenclature. These new drugs are called “smart pills,” not “wise pills.” Perhaps there is a drug in development that will enhance the memory. But there’s no correlation between upping your dosage of brain boosters and suddenly gaining wisdom.

The apostle Paul understands the nature of wisdom. In his pastoral letter to Timothy, he advises his young pastoral colleague that there will be times when people will not “put up with sound doctrine” but reject the foundations of the Christian faith, grabbing anything that satisfies their particular curiosities. It would cause them to wander away from the foundational teachings of Scripture and tradition, the teachings considered to be reliable guides to knowing the God of Jesus Christ; they will latch on to teachers who give them what they want or cause to wander toward myths that satisfy their curiosity.

This is a startling indictment of the anti-intellectual setting that has emerged in the early 1980s and continues today in American culture, beginning with New Age tomfoolery including harmonic convergence, crystals, pyramid power, The Celestine Prophecy, Ram Dass, Marianne Williamson, The Course in Miracles, to the Left Behind series, and even The Da Vinci Code.

What are we to make of a culture where millions of people, including Christians, embrace a well-written mystery novel that weaves history and fantasy without any regard for the question: Is this stuff true? No, any first — year church history student in seminary can spot the errors just flipping pages. It is a novel, after all; it isn’t meant to be true, though the author claims that some of it is. The DaVinci Code makes the wildly outlandish suggestion that leaders in the Roman Catholic Church have conspired for centuries to keep secret the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene and the child born of their sexual alliance. This would be fine, as long as it was made clear that there is not a shred of historical evidence to substantiate this claim. This book is a novel! Well written and filled with tantalizing riddles woven around fiction written as history, the book is a great read. But that’s all. The less discerning, however, are seduced by it.

Those who are led astray by books like The DaVinci Code or The Celestine Prophecy and other quasi-Christian proclamations are the ones who either have no serious knowledge of Scripture or the historic teachings of the church, or who have simply decided that the facts in the Scriptures have been contorted and thus they want the truth. It doesn’t matter that the scriptures have remain virtually the same since they were written a little under 2,000 years ago and survived test after test, and church council after church council. This is precisely the reason that the apostle Paul encourages us to be proficient in the knowledge of Scripture, so that we have minds and hearts that are capable of recognizing those teachings that sound vaguely Christian or spiritual, that titillate our imagination, but do not make us wise persons in the ways of God, because they are not really biblically or theologically true.

Paul seemed to recognize that we have an infinite capacity to believe speculative ideas that will satisfy our personal whims. This may be why he cautioned us to stay grounded in the Scripture that contains what is necessary for righteousness or what we might call wise living. Reading novels (thought to be a scandalous and idle entertainment in the 18th century, incidentally) can be a profitable escape from the day to day. I like a good novel myself. Novels are good entertainment. But for wise living, we turn to Scripture. Today’s text states, “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work”.

This is not to suggest that simply knowing Scripture by memory is the point or that we shouldn’t read anything other than Scripture or refuse to address questions that challenge the faith. That kind of anti-intellectualism disguised as Christian piety leads to a rigidity that is unable to engage anyone who thinks differently. We have to have enough exposure to many trains of thought, to remain able to think for ourselves. All roads lead Rome, some say, though we know it not to be literally true. The same applies to heaven; all roads lead to heaven is also not true. As Jesus stated, we are to follow the road less traveled. All this said, we need to be open to various thoughts on God, but not all of them will lead you to heaven.

What Paul had in mind was the ability to live so well in the narratives of the Bible that one comes to know intimately the living God. With the mind shaped by Scripture through a living relationship with God, one can confidently address challenges to the teaching of Scripture with discerning intelligence that would actually persuade people of an excellent way of life, grounded in wisdom and prepared for good works.

Paul’s advice to Timothy is embodied in the five imperatives, or five smart pills if you will: Proclaim the Word, Be persistent, Convince, Reprimand, and Encourage.

We come to know Scripture not to be mindless religious robots but to be lovers of Jesus Christ, faithful disciples in a culture that offers up one remedy after another, each promising a better life, holding out the prospect of satisfying the deeper hunger of our hearts for God with a new religion or a new drug.

An English preacher of the 19th century describes studying a beech tree one afternoon. As a skilled naturalist he noted the color of the leaves, the texture of the bark and the intricacy of the branches. Such study was, for him, a form of grateful prayer to God as rich as any study in the library. On this particular day, he noticed a squirrel running up the branches, leaping from one to the other, playing in every nook of the great tree. The squirrel moved among the branches as if the trunk were Main Street and the smaller branches country lanes or alleys; somewhere among the branches was his house and daily food.

As he reflected imaginatively on this inquisitive, frolicking squirrel, so wonderfully at home in the beech tree, he draws this analogy to our relationship with Scripture. “The way to deal with God’s word is not merely to contemplate it, or study it, as a student does; but to live on it, as that squirrel lives on his beech tree. Let it be to you, spiritually, your house, your home, your food, your medicine, your clothing, the one essential element of your soul’s life and growth.”

This being “at home” in Scripture is certainly an alternative to the seemingly endless quest for novel pill or new philosophy that is going to fulfill one’s every desire. Jerome described the Bible as a lake, where one may stay on the surface or choose to explore the infinite depths of truth contained within it.

A daily smart pill might increase your memory, but a day spent studying Scripture with an open heart and a searching mind will increase your love for God, make you a wise person, and enable you to discern false teaching the next time it comes to the box office or the bookstore.God Love You ++ The Most Rev. Robert WinzensPastor – St. Francis Universal Catholic ChurchSan Diego, Ca.

The Nineteenth Sunday after TrinityIn September I started a little series on why we should attend church. We took a brief hiatus, so today we will visit this again. This time, we shall bounce around many examples, as opposed to the one or two that I did in the previous two sermons on the topic. As I mentioned before, this is as much for our people here today as it is for those who read my sermons online.In March of this year, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York gave a similar sermon that had some interesting points. As an example, he stated that “Anybody 50 or older can remember when faithful attendance at Sunday Mass was the norm for all Catholics. To miss Sunday Eucharist, unless you were sick, was simply unheard of. To be a "practicing Catholic" meant you were at Mass every Sunday. Over 75 percent of Catholics went to Mass every Sunday.”This is a very true statement. There was a time when if you missed Mass, or going to church in general, it was considered a grave sin. Society today does not view it this way today. The “rules” haven’t changed; just people’s views of them. Sunday was developed as the Christian answer to the Holy Sabbath. As most of us here know, God gave a commandment to keep the Sabbath holy and to do nothing work related on those days. Sad to say, that we have let this fall by the way side. Many people not only work on this day, but ignore God’s desire for us to spend it with him.The fourth commandment of the law that God gave Moses, was to set aside the seventh day of the week, which happens to be Saturday on our calendars, as a holy day to the Lord. "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy", as it states in the book of Exodus. This was, and will always remain, the official Sabbath. However, after Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week, Sunday, the early Christians began meeting together on this day as well as with the Jewish community in the synagogues on the Sabbath. History indicates that due to the enmity of the orthodox Jews toward the Christian Jews in their midst, the Jewish Christians were eventually ostracized. And although they were no longer bound to a rigid code of laws, it is believed that they came to view Sunday as a combined observance of the Sabbath and the resurrection day of Jesus. This day of Christian worship came to be called the Lord's Day, a day to fellowship in celebration of the resurrection, to worship, pray and study the Word together.The Fourth Commandment and the Sabbath is not all about not working. Jesus made that clear to the Pharisees when they questioned why he allowed his Disciples to pick grain on the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made for mankind, not mankind for the Sabbath. Yes, God wanted us to take a day of rest, as it were, but he also wanted us to take time to spend with him. Whether that be in quiet reflection or in a joyful worship service. He wants us to remember first and foremost that we are his creation and we have an obligation to him as our creator. All that we have and do is because he allows it. As Timothy Dolan also said, “If you want your faith to wither up and die, quit going to Sunday Mass. As the body will die without food, the soul will expire without nourishment. That sustenance comes at the Sunday Eucharist.”He further states, “In recapturing our sense of Sunday, of the Christian Sabbath, it is important to grasp this key point, that the Sabbath rest is our liberation from the profane and our encounter with the sacred. The Sabbath is not rest so that we can work harder.” By profane he is using the word in its correct definition of taking something sacred and treating it with irreverence.Archbishop Dolan continues asking us to listen to Rabbi Heschel: "The Sabbath is a day for the sake of life. Man is not a beast of burden, and the Sabbath is not for the purpose of enhancing the efficiency of his work... The Sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays; the weekdays are for the sake of the Sabbath. It is not an interlude, but the climax of living."“The idea of the Sabbath making present the covenant, reminds us Catholics immediately of the [importance of the] Mass. In the Mass, the one sacrifice of Calvary, the new covenant ratified in the Blood of the Lord Jesus, is made present anew. It is not another sacrifice, but the one sacrifice of the Cross. It is not repeated, as though Christ were being crucified again, but rather made present to us across time and space.”“The heart of Sunday must be the Mass! How could it be anything else? The Mass is nothing else but the supreme work of the Lord Jesus, and nothing else will do to mark the Lord's day, the day of salvation, the day of the Church!”When we think about it, these are all very good points that Archbishop Dolan makes. There are always those who simply do not go to church because they would rather do something else, or are too lazy, or put other things such as entertainment and amusements before God, or who harbor bitterness or indifference toward other believers. None of which are good reasons to not come to church and worship God. Some would say that they can worship God anywhere. Not so! That is simply a lazy cop-out! When you attempt to do this, there are too many distractions to take your mind off of God. Here at church, the distractions are actually of God. When one simply looks around, you see nothing except that which reminds you of God and your need to worship him and be replenished with the Word of God and the Holy Eucharist.The Gospel of Matthew (10:32-33) indicates Jesus telling his followers that they should gather together in mutual belief of God. Going to church is a visible, tangible expression of our love and worship toward God. It is where we can gather with other believers to publicly bear witness of our faith and trust in God, something that is required of all Christians and it is where we can bring Him offerings of praise, thanks, and honor, which are pleasing to Him. We were created to worship God. People are often motivated toward church attendance for how it will bless themselves, however we should remember that the primary purpose of the corporate gathering is to bring "service" to the Lord as a blessing to Him. This is the reality of why we were created by God.Receiving the preaching and teaching of the Word of God increases our faith and builds us up spiritually. Every believer knows what it is to face spiritual conflicts to their faith, and must realize the importance of being fed spiritually so that they can overcome the challenges. Paul states that Christians face a wrestling match with the Devil and his evil spiritual forces, and warns that the church must put on spiritual armor for protection, as it will take everything at our disposal to stand. It is thus so important that we take every opportunity available to receive ministry, and be strengthened by God's Word and the Body and Blood of our Lord in the Eucharist each Sunday. "So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God". So, you should go to church because that is where you can hear the word of God explained and applied to your life, see how God works in people's lives, and experience the friendship of others.There is the promise of a special visitation of the Lord's presence whenever two or more gather specifically in the name of Jesus. By implication, this means whenever "Jesus" is the object of gatherings of prayer, worship, praise, preaching, etcetera. Even though Jesus resides within the heart of every believer, he honors a gathering in his name by coming in the "midst," with his power, awareness, and anointing. In such a gathering, Christ is able to do things in hearts that he may not at any other time. The scripture says that God inhabits the praise of His people, and in such an atmosphere the Holy Spirit will often manifest spiritual gifts that minister to the body of Christ. "For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them" (Matt. 18:20).We are also called to gather at church due to the various gifts we have that can benefit the common good. I Corinthians 12 makes it clear that God has given spiritual gifts to every Christian. And verse 7 states unmistakably that these abilities are not provided to make you feel good; they are abilities to minister to those around us, and thus should be used for the common good! I Peter 4:10 commands us to use spiritual gifts to help each other.Paul explains that each part of the body exists to meet the needs of other body parts. In the same way, God intends each of us to meet the needs of other believers, using our strengths to help in their areas of weakness. In Corinthians it says "The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you." Neither can a Christian claim to be self-sufficient today. Soaking God up at the beach just does not cut it.The New Testament is full of “one another” commands. We are to comfort one another, build up one another, confess our sins to one another, pray for one another, and many more. How can we obey these directives if we stay away from the gathering of believers? A single verse should actually be sufficient answer for this question: Hebrews 10:25 warns its readers against “forsaking the assembly of yourselves together, as the manner of some.God designed the church as a place where spiritual leaders could watch out for our welfare, as a shepherd guards the sheep (I Peter 5:1-4; Hebrews 13:17). A Christian who answers only to himself can easily rationalize sinful attitudes or actions; regular contact with other Christians can keep us sharp.And what about faith?St. James tells us, “Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead”. We have often heard James’ teaching put this way: faith without works is dead. Or in other words, faith is exercised in our daily lives or it is no faith at all. These views of James are not bad or incorrect. However, they narrow the scope of what I believe is James’ original, much broader, point. His message touches every corner of our lives each moment of every day.

Since the Reformation and the Reformers’ emphasis upon salvation by faith alone, theologians and preachers have tossed this passage back and forth in arguments about the role of works in our salvation. This passage is a favorite among those who remind us of our Christian duty to relieve the suffering of the poor and the oppressed. Some argue that we are saved by faith alone. However, when we state this, we have forgotten that Jesus himself stated the need to put faith together with action. When did we feed him, clothe him or visit him in prison, and the many other things we could do for one of the people of God. (Matthew 25)Writers and commentators often use the term “faith” to mean the opinions individuals hold. In today’s multicultural, increasingly secular world, it is especially the case that faith is understood to be the purely subjective beliefs that an individual may hold or reject for his or her own private reasons. There is great cultural pressure to treat these beliefs as private, that is, to keep them to ourselves. It is considered intolerant to impose our faith upon others, since faith has come to be defined as my purely subjective opinions, and we believe that everyone has a right to his or her own opinion.This all sounds very civilized until we look seriously at what Jesus and St. James teaches us. Faith involves actions or it is no faith at all. Being a Christian is not just about the ideas we hold to be true. Nor is Christian faith merely a credo of good works based on a theory of social justice or moral conduct. First and foremost, Christianity is about following Jesus Christ with our whole mind, heart, body, will, imagination, time, and substance. We believe ideas and thus model our behavior according to certain patterns because we trust and follow Jesus Christ. We can’t keep our faith to ourselves. To be faithful is to have an impact on the world around us!Faith is not a set of opinions that we can just keep to ourselves. Faith is the posture we take toward our neighbors and our world as an expression of our relationship with God. To put this in a slightly different way, faith is how we engage the world we inhabit as people who follow Jesus Christ into that world.So what does exercising our faith look like? We might speak about our moral life, the place of Christian study, the importance of committing ourselves to a ministry within the church, evangelism, outreach, and tithing. But let’s begin at the beginning: our devotional life. The Christian life begins in prayerful response to God’s loving initiative toward us. Worshipping our Lord is an act of surrender. We give ourselves back to the one who has given himself utterly to us.So how do we put our faith to work? How about weekly worship with our brothers and sisters in Christ. Daily personal prayer devotions at set times. Make a date with God to give thanks, ask forgiveness, seek guidance, intercede for others, and above all, give our Lord praise. Daily devotional Bible reading. Saying the blessing before every meal, even when out in public. Spontaneous silent prayers during the day in response to events around us or thoughts as they occur to us. Maybe attend the Confirmation Classes taking place after Mass currently.Much more can be said about each of these dimensions of our devotional lives. An exercise will only have its most positive effects if it becomes a daily habit.What about those who say they are “‘Spiritual’ but not ‘religious’.” If there were a church of the Spiritual but not Religious, it would be one of the fastest growing denominations available. But, what does it mean?We live in a culture and society that tells us we should think for ourselves. We live in the United States, after all, so we are taught that one of our freedoms is to think and do what we want. People who call themselves ‘spiritual but not religious’ are simply saying that they think for themselves, and will not usually accept anything anyone else says as being true.So, when they reject “organized religion”, they think they are rejecting having someone tell them to believe in a different way or act in a different way. They think that being a part of “organized religion” somehow takes some of their freedom away to think for themselves and believe what they want. They apparently haven’t visited our church, in which we allow people to think for themselves, as long as they respect each other’s views and are open to the Holy Spirit working through the pastor to communicate God’s word that may be different from their own!However, how can you come to a belief if you do not allow yourself to be informed of various views, studies and facts? How can you think about something that you have not allowed yourself to be informed of? We all give a great deal of credit to science, because we feel it can be proven or has been proven. Little do we know that science is a “study” of something in physical reality. Science is not a perfect answer; it is a study of something. I do not hear people saying they are scientists, but they don’t believe in organized science. It would be illogical to make such a statement, because it is well known that we must share scientific facts to find answers to that which we are studying.Just as science is the method by which we seek the truth in the physical realm, religion is the method we use to explore the spiritual realm. That is why we exercise our faith, by being a part of “organized religion” because it is in this capacity that we have the ability to investigate the spiritual realm that we know exists, but are unsure as to exactly how. Religion, or Church, gives us the freedom to explore the reality of God.So, as I conclude this series, let us ask ourselves if we need the church; if we need to go there to be fed. We go to grocery stores to buy nourishment and other daily necessities for life. If we did not do so, we would eventually die. Our spiritual life needs to be fed too. We need to allow ourselves to be re-nourished with the word of God and the worship of God. When we are feeling down and out, sick or simply unworthy, those are the times that we need to go to church the most. If we do not take action, how can we expect God to? I am sure you have all heard the phrase, “even a miracle needs a hand”. That is because God wants our involvement, not just bland unexercised belief.Jesus Christ mandated that the Church become a reality when he stated that St. Peter would be the rock upon which he would build his Church. Jesus knew all too well, that we need some ‘physical’ form to help us in our faith. Jesus knew that we needed priests and ministers to act as his agents to help us stay on the path toward him and to ensure we lived a life in promise to each other. When we miss an opportunity to go to church, we not only miss an opportunity for ourselves, but also an opportunity to build up one another and most importantly, to be in the presence of God more fully than we can do on our own!God Love You ++ The Most Rev. Robert WinzensPastor – St. Francis Universal Catholic ChurchSan Diego, Ca.